Producing effective online learning activities takes time, effort and creativity. This module looks at the process of creating learning resources with the intention that they are shareable resources; making them available to others, driving the concept of collaborative creation in your own...

This module looks at the practical issues of how to build synchronous online learning into a balanced programme of online and face-to-face learning. It examines the challenges of real-time online activity (technical, social and personal) and things you can do to ensure that learner experience...

Synchronised working uses technology to deliver learning normally done in a classroom or workshop, without having to be physically present in the room. Learners can observe and take notes, but also engage with the teacher and fellow students. All the benefits of working together,...

Stretching the efforts and reach made by learners is how teachers can express their desire for high expectations of learners and to make the most of their time in learning. Digital learning provides a platform, format or place to support these challenges. It offers new ways of providing a step up...

This module looks at how to improve the elements of an organisation's digital technology strategy that relate to accessibility and its significance for bringing about change in teaching and learning practice.

Immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR) make a distinctive contribution to learning and to individual learners that cannot be replicated by any other media currently available to educators. What makes it special for educational content creators is its ability to fully immerse the user...

Video is a powerful tool for teaching, learning and assessment. High quality recording capability built into mobile devices make it easy to create, edit and apply video to everyday practice. The resulting footage can be uploaded, shared and accessed on a number of sites and platforms.

Animated images can provide a way into a complex idea, enliven content, engage attention, consolidate, reinforce and make learning memorable. It can reveal the impossible and invisible – the structure of an atom or how a virus attacks the body.

Well-designed mobile learning activities can deliver a range of benefits to learners. This module will look at two scenarios that describe the advantage of good design and the issues that can constrain it.

This module will look at what is meant by mobile learning. It will illustrate some of the teaching and learning opportunities that mobile phones, tablets, and small laptops can bring. Ownership of smart devices amongst the under-50s in the UK is nearing 100%, with increasing use for a widening...

The diversity of learners extends to differences in their levels of digital skills, experience and confidence. This module looks at ways to ensure that our teaching does not disadvantage those with existing low levels of digital skills.

The culture that we grow up and live in can influence the way we prefer to communicate. This module looks at how we can draw on this rich diversity to improve the learning experience for all.

Legislation for accessibility changed in a very positive way with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations (2018). This module looks at how to stay on the right side of these regulations.

Technology makes meaningful personalisation a practical reality. Assistive technology, with materials and resources designed for accessibility and inclusion provides the essential foundations to support learners with a disability or learning disadvantage. This module looks at the ways in...

This module considers how issues of equitable access to digital technologies can have an impact on the quality of learning and how this may be redressed.

This module looks at an individual's digital context based on personal access to the appropriate technology, their awareness of it, and the digital skills to make use of them.

This module follows on from the module Creating inclusive content: Principles. It shows how the principles from Creating inclusive content: Principles can be applied to create resources that are good for all users.

Confidence in your digital practice comes from success: success in improving your teaching and learning rather than being good with gadgets. This requires the capacity for personal critical reflection and a means to share what you did with colleagues, at your workplace and in wider...

This module looks at a broad classification of learning disabilities and the forms of technology that are best suited to overcome the associated challenges to learning.

This module looks at using technology to support the learning activities of SLDD learners who are working towards living independently.

This module explores the use of spoken text through devices such as e-readers and eBooks to overcome barriers to learning for a range of learners, not only those with a sight impairment.

This module explores the range of accessibility assistance, from common mainstream software, apps and tools, through to the specialist or bespoke technology for complex individual needs, and its implications for teaching and learning practice.

This module shows some principles of good practice for creating content that meets the needs of learners with a disability or learning disadvantage.

This module looks at the impact on teaching strategy of learners who bring their own devices. This has implications for users of assistive technology and for those learners who prefer to work on their own devices.

Computer-based tests and digital media are widely used in formative assessment. This module looks at their use for enhancing low stakes summative assessment activities, where the goal is to test and confirm that a learner has completed a block of work, and for programmes such as NVQ, where...

Feedback response times are a critical lever for improving learner engagement and success. This module looks at how technology can support improved assessment and feedback methodologies and interventions, to lower turnaround time.

This module examines how we currently use the data available to us, how we might find ways to develop it further to improve teaching and learning and what the emerging field of learning analytics might contribute.

Formative assessment is a core part of instruction. It delivers challenge, embeds knowledge and enables learners to measure their own progress and needs; it is a natural candidate for delivery through technology.

The embedding of digital technology across all forms of subject-assessment creates opportunities for developing learners’ transferable skills over and above vocational expertise that is at the core of their learning programmes. This module looks at how you can make transferable skills...

Peer assessment happens when learners find inspiration and insight in the ideas, suggestions, criticisms, contributions and thoughts of other learners, relative to their own contributions. As a result, learners can refine actions, comments and contributions to make their own learning and work...

An e-portfolio is an online repository, belonging to and managed by the owner. It's a personal technology rather than shared, like a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). It contains artefacts added by the owner that are curated, arranged and presented, either in their own right or as...

Polling tools have stretched far beyond their original function of carrying out surveys and reporting results. Anyone who bought goods or services online will have encountered them; they underpin user satisfaction reporting across the board in the burgeoning online retail market, from...

Using videos, structured sets of annotated still images and sound recordings can be a great way to provide feedback. This is particularly true when the work you are assessing is an event or performance of a task: when you want to know how well an apprentice changed a washer, not how well they...

Quizzes have long been recognised as a useful method to test learners' knowledge and check their understanding, but they offer more than that. Their effectiveness lies in their ability to be accessed when learners want to check learning and can be repeated as often as leaners want,...

Taking photos, making videos and creating sound recordings is easy work for anyone with access to a smartphone or tablet. Once captured, image, video and audio files can be easily uploaded and stored online, edited, mixed with other evidence, shared for assessment and annotated for feedback....

Technology-based assessment has become increasingly sophisticated in the design of tests. This is through automating the collection, and the immediacy of the presentation, of the results.

Written text remains the most common way of providing feedback to learners on their outcomes and performance in assessment. Many digital tools are now available for creating and delivering written feedback in different formats and media, annotating, overwriting, converting speech to text,...

Homework traditionally follows classwork: a teacher introduces the subject matter then homework reinforces the learning. Now that facts and information are just a quick search away, learners need to know more than ever how to evaluate, understand and apply information. Flipped learning...

EdTech enables us to deliver scenarios online and bring them to life through the application of technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) role playing and games formats. This module looks at how to create authentic scenarios and apply them to effective learning.

Simulation refers to creating a model of an activity, environment or situation which reproduces the characteristics of real-life events and delivers authentic responses to the learner’s choices and actions. The consequences of error in decision-making, judgment, manual or cognitive skills...

Teachers can achieve better outcomes by imaginative re-use, recycling and repurposing of existing content – whether it be their own, their colleagues', or resources and materials found on the internet. It also looks at the role and importance of organisations in creating and promoting...

Productivity software (office business applications) such as word processing, presentation software and spreadsheets are amongst the most common applications most of us encounter and use on a daily basis. Continual development of functionality has taken them beyond flat text production, number...

The non-profit Creative Commons (CC) organisation was set up to make it easy to share and use creative content online. Licensing is simple and free on the organisation’s website. This module looks at Creative Commons as a method of copyrighting work and the advantages for users and authors...

The internet is full of information and it’s not all accurate. This module looks at the different types of error to be found, from unintended to deliberately misleading and how to prepare learners to recognise and deal with them.

Netiquette is short for internet etiquette. A code of behaviour for communications on the web. It arose in the early years of the internet to address the difficulties fast emerging in online communications, from frustration and misunderstanding at one end of the spectrum, to unpleasantness and...

The government formally recognised digital skills as the third essential skill, together with English and Maths. This module looks at the framework and standards and considers how they might affect both ICT and other teaching staff.

Recall doesn't just demonstrate evidence of learning; it is an integral part of the learning process. This module identifies the core elements of recall and revision and looks at the role that technology can play in directing them to improve learning outcomes.

The way students learn and the skills they need to progress are the same used in class, but they offer new challenges to get the best from the options they present. How learners meet those challenges at the start of a programme and what help is provided for improvement requires thought in initial...

This module looks at the digital components of personal learning environments, the contribution that they make to learning and at ways in which teachers can direct the full span of digital possibility to successful outcomes.

This module looks at a systematic approach to assessing the reliability and validity of information that is likely to end up embedded in learning resources and teaching practice.

The module explores the practical underpinnings of good attribution and referencing. It looks at how to develop and reinforce the judgement learners need in order to avoid plagiarism. This module pairs with Dealing with plagiarism.

Learner created content is a foundation stone of the shift from dependence to independence and on further to the collaborative interdependence that characterises modern employment. This module looks at ways that teachers can support development of the necessary skills, behaviours and attitudes to...

Planning and developing a sequence of understandable instructions or ordered steps to solve a given problem or perform a specific task is a core skill for education and employment. This module looks at how teachers can support and develop this across a range of subject areas using different...

This module looks at what we mean by content and how teachers can help learners to develop an understanding of the tools and skills they can apply to creating it. It is paired with and followed by the module Independent learners: developing skills for content creation.

Plagiarism is wholly unacceptable in an educational context. When carried out with the intention to pass the work of others off as your own it is fraudulent; when done without that intent it is lazy or negligent. This module looks at how to ensure that learners understand the boundary between...

Digital note-taking tools exist to cover all of the situations when what you need is a platform for informal rough working: planning, preparing and structuring a task; making sketches and diagrams. They are the digital equivalents of the back of an envelope or a blank sheet of paper, but they...

Surveys show that over half of the people on the planet use social media platforms. Social media are embedded into work and daily life so being able to use them is an essential vocational and life skill.

Research shows that reflection and review of learning and the processes by which it is carried out are powerful methods for improving knowledge retention, learner experience and outcomes. This module explores the role of both tools in promoting reflective learning and contributing to improved...

To develop your understanding, skills and confidence to teach competencies in Dealing with technical problems from the Using devices and handling information skills area of the National Standards for Essential Digital Skills (2019).

This module looks at the means of managing content that has been created and collected by users. It is important to keep content in secure storage and to be able to retrieve it easily by searching.

This module looks at navigating online content to search for and find useful content. It looks at using searches, hyperlinks, menus and other navigation elements to locate required information. This will include how to retain and save useful links to content for future use or for reference. Users...

This module looks at the basic components of personal computing through the use of the various devices, the systems that run on them, setting them up as preferred and keeping them in good order.